Cold War
by Warringer
Summary: An Babylon 5 AU. There weren'r only two of the First Ones races left behind, when the others left for beyond the rim.
1. Chapter 1

Cold War

by Warringer

Prolog

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Captain Athema cursed for the n-th time. It had been a bad day. Worse it had been a bad last deca-orbit.

"Main Fusion Reactors are going to fail in about a half tenth circle," she heard Lieutenant Sorda say," We need to get out of jump space before they do."

Athema nodded. All because of those blasted Vorlons and Shadows. All they could think of was their little 'dispute' how to deal with the younger races. The Vorlons thought that they had to be brought into some sort of rigid order, while the Shadows wanted to spread wars between them. Her own race, the Ancients, had always cooperated with the younger races, helped them now and then and had very good relations to them.

While the other First Ones left for the Rim, the Vorlons and Shadows had been left behind because of their 'dispute', while the Ancients remained behind on their own, wanting to watch over them to prevent them from doing something they would regret later.

And than, about a deca-orbit ago, Vorlons and Shadows had come to one agreement. The Ancients were in their way and needed to be exterminated or chased out to beyond the Rim, with all their allies, five of the younger races.

"Prepare for Jump to normal space," she said," any systems in range?"

"A yellow dwarf, eight planets and two asteroid rings, nothing of interest there. Through the third planet is sustaining life."

"Life?"

Sorda nodded.

"Yes, but even if we can get to the planet, we won't survive a drop to the planet itself. We would break apart in the atmosphere."

About a day ago a Joint Vorlon-Shadow force had ambushed a refugee convoy that was on its way from the core worlds to a staging area near the Rim. The convoy had consisted of more than fifty ships transporting about 250.000 refugees, Ancients and members of the five allied younger races, in stasis chambers.

Only seven ships had survived the ambush due to playing dead and they all had been heavily damaged. All they could do was docking and try to get to the staging area with the power of the two surviving engine sections. And now the last backup fusion reactor would fail to work and only a few low power Zero Point Modules would power a few chosen systems, like the stasis chambers, the computers and some others.

"We need to get as close to the third planet as possible and settle in a high orbit."

Sorda nodded again.

"And what will we do than?"

"Wait. It's the only thing we can do. We get into stasis and hope that the planet had intelligent life and will help us in the foreseeable future."

"Well, the data records don't show anything that could be intelligent life on the planet. But those records are about two hundred kilo-orbits old. Maybe there is intelligent life now."

"Lets hope for the best," Athema said," We should program a sequence that activates when the receivers detect radio signals coming from the planet."

Sorda sighed.

"Yes, lets hope for the best. I'll inform the crews."

With that a conglomerate of seven cylindric ships went into high orbit around a planet that would be called 'Earth' by its inhabitants in about two million orbits of the planet. It sat in high orbit for about two hundred thousand orbits, before being caught by the planets large natural satellite and descending towards its surface.

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Mankind grow up with a huge scar marring the Mare Imbrium, called the 'Great Trench'. For millions of years it was just another feature to the moons face.

Galileo Galilei used his telescope on the moon and spotted something that looked artificial at one end of the Great Trench.

When the first low power EM transmissions came from Earth, the ancient systems of the downed ship started to flash an intense light from the end of the Great Trench, signaling that something was there.

In 1928 the EM transmission from Earth had reached a sufficient complexity that another program started to run in the ancient systems, broadcasting a complicated radio signal, repeating it every 24 hours and being heard all over the world with the right receivers.

While very odd, it was enough like one of HG Wells' early stories (about a ship crash landing on the moon, the survivors starving to death while looking at potential salvation in the skies above them) to capture the imagination of most of the world.

The major problem was the language barrier.

As a British scientist named Hawking decided to check the neighboring band of the Moon Signal, he discovered a lot of signals, resulting in another level of transmissions. This had the effect that the worldwide Depression was so what moved from the front pages as everyone already knew that nothing could be done other than telling people what they already knew. But news from the Moon on the other hand was something people could focus on during this time.

The really great news came in 1932, when television was invented and someone got the idea of trying to route the Moon Signal into a television. One of the sub bands of the Signal contained pictured needed to get to other new discoveries about the Signal.

A great number of the pictures coming from the Moon, thought the language needed to translate the information in the other signals, while other pictures showed things that didn't need translations.

Beautiful women in space, an ancient war involving spider-crab and squid like ships, the pictures of rows and rows of tubes with bodies in stasis hoping to wake up in a new home. Really heavy stuff.

Technical information in the pictures gave engineers new ideas and a worldwide need to help the beings in the downed ship. The age of new scientific breakthroughs began in 1933.

But it wasn't all good after 1932.

Adolf Hitler came into power and the Nazi propaganda claimed that the women shown in the pictures from the Moon were the Arian ancestors and that the non-human beings shown in the pictures were alien servant races. The thing was, Adolf believed it himself and when he heard of a group of rocket enthusiasts near Berlin, trying to build a rocket that could reach the Moon, he leaped in and started to fund their research.

Neville Chamberlain on the other side came back from Germany, convinced that reason and diplomacy had worked and now everyone could get back to the Space Race without having to worry about that funny little man from Berlin. No problem.

Germany wasn't really hindered by the Treaty of Versailles in their development of Rockets and so they could go and use them also as weapons.

Of cause Goebbels made use of this in propaganda and the launch of the 'Reichsfunktrabant 1' using a A9/A4 combinations into a 400km orbit in 1938 was a wakeup call for the rest of the world.

Even more so was the invasion of Poland, where hundreds and thousands of A4 and A9 rained down on Poland military installations. The Wehrmacht only needed a week to take over Poland.

This forced the Soviets, Americans and Britons to deploy their less effective rockets too early. Than Hitler moved into the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France, using the same combination of rocket based long range bombardment with A-4 and A-9, close air support and fast moving tanks.

But another development, aided by the radio signals from the Visitor made it hard for Hitler to move onto Britain, semiconductors. They were developed by the Jewisch scientist David Goldstein in the Bell Labs 1935, using Germanium and Silicon. Combined with the development of Radar, the Britons were able to field radar systems able to track down A-4 and A-9 rockets during their whole flight. They even managed to build a radar aided flak system capable of intercepting a German missile and taking it out of the air. Stationed around the preferred targets of German rocket bombings, they were able to destroy 80 percent of the missiles that reached airspace over Britain.

But in the end, it wasn't the Allies who stopped Hitlers plans. It was a group of Generals around Graf von Staufenberg, who was later killed by the SS after a successful assassination of Hitler. The Generals baking him up reacted very fast and before Hitlers substitute could come into power. They brought Marshall Rommel into power and as the SS tried to assassinate Rommel in August 1944, they routed them out, destroying the still Hitler loyal SS with units of the Wehrmacht. The SA followed soon after.

Rommel was able to get a peace treaty with the Allies, withdrawing to the French and Soviet border. As he heard about the KZs, he visited one of them, before ordering to end the 'Endlösung', freeing the Jews and handing the people responsible for it over to the Allies.

It needed years for Germany to become a true Democratic country and a respected member of the newly founded NATO.

In the Pacific the war heated up after the end of the War in Europe. But the Japanese weren't quite able to come to a good end, not after America entered the War 1941. America was much too powerful and they were able to field a powerful new weapon, missile destroyers. They were much more effective than the Japanese aircraft carriers, at least until the Japanese managed to get their hands on a German Jet engine in December 1942 and fielded the first Jet Fighters in July 1943, a good two years after their introduction into the European War theater.

Technology made leaps and bounds. The Britons introduced the first supersonic Fighter, into the Pacific in 1944, after the end of the War in Europe. It had been designed to be a counter to a proclaimed German supersonic fighter, able to fly 1000 miles an hour. Later it turned out that it had been a translation error, and that the information had spoken of the Me-262 with a speed of 1000 kilometer per hour.

The War in the Pacific dragged until 1946, when an American long range rocket was started from Guam, destroying Kagoshima with a 10 kt nuclear warhead. Another missile from Guam destroyed Okinawa.

A rocket of the same type that destroyed two Japanese cities deployed the first Explorer satellite about two month after Okinawa.

Peace was finally achieved, but it didn't last as the Soviets detonated a nuclear device in 1947, resulting in the beginning of the Cold War. In response to the threat of the Soviet Bomb, the western Allies founded the NATO in 1949. Germany became a full member of the NATO in 1949, after detonating their own nuclear device in the Southern Atlantic. Hundreds of bases of NATO countries were build along the German-Soviet border, outfitted with missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons deep into the Soviet Union.

In 1950 Britain started their first satellite, followed by the first man in space a month later. Everything after that came fast. People were put into orbit and all NATO countries build the first space station together, based on a design of Werner Von Braun. Stalin did the same. In 1954 the NATO and the USSR had a station in orbit.

In 1950 another war started in Korea and the NATO started to enter this war. American Missile Destroyers, started to systematically destroy anything of military value in northern Korea, while the ground troops were annihilated by NATO ground troops. The war ended just 18 month after it began, with the NATO as victor.

On the technology front, Bell Labs developed the first integrated circuits in 1948 and IBM and the Konrad Zuse Elektronik GmbH developed the first electronic computers in 1951. This made it possible to find the digital signals hidden in the 'static noise' of the Visitor's signal. It made another boost of technology possible.

Anti-gravity devices were build in 1953, followed by a formula that made it possible to live longer. While the first anti-gravity vehicles went into civil service, Albert Einstein received the first life prolong injection, reducing his physical age to that of a 40 year old man. In less than two years everyone could get the life prolong injection.

In 1954 the first space ships with anti-gravity devices entered service, reducing the cost of getting into space greatly.

1955 was the year of the first warm portion of the Cold War, when Stalin launched the first nuclear drop satellite, able to drop more than twenty nuclear devices to any place on the world. As a result, the NATO countries came closer together and launched their own NDS until NATO and USSR were able to annihilate each other without launching a missile.

But the Cold War became warmer as the two antagonists put their point of view towards the Moon. In 1958 it was the NATO space ship Enterprise landing near the Visitor first, followed by the Soviet ship Ziolkowski a week later. But neither side wanted to leave the Visitor to the other and the first War in space began, lasting about two month, with the NATO being the victor again, but the Soviets were able to get themselves the backup database of the ship, leaving the NATO with the original and having the same information. But with their access to the Visitor, the NATO had a greater advantage.

Following the defeat on the Moon, Stalin set himself two new targets. One was dominance in space when he wasn't able to get it on the Moon and getting more space on Earth. In 1960, the USSR nuked Beijing and took over China as a whole in only two month. As a direct result, Japan, India and Australia entered the NATO.

Optical Computers were the development of the year 1961, the year as the NATO became a single nation to counter the USSR. The years 1962 brought the first neural implants, three dimensional TV and the first large USSR base in HEO, when the USSR put a large 30 kilometer asteroid into orbit.

In 1961 there was a short interruption in Vietnam as the Vietkong attacked the French Army, but the NATO response was hard and swift, but the Vietkong became a problem thanks to covert Soviet help. The Vietnam conflict dragged over years, resulting in Vietkong MiG-17 interceptors destroying two NATO space stations.

The year 1969 brought the first NATO NEO base orbiting around L5 and the beginning of the largest construction in human history, the O'Neill Type 5 colony New Maine, finished in 1975 and colonized until 1976. Orbit around Earth became colonized an urbanized. The USSR and the life prolonged Stalin countered by building their own O'Neill colonies in L4 and L3. Large portions of NATO and USSR population were send into space to colonize the O'Neill stations.

In 1971 the colony on the Moon, grew to over thirty million people becoming their own state of the NATO. In the same year, the crew of the Visitor was found in an unexplored section of the Visitor. They weren't awaken until 1976.

The Cold War continued to be cold as a USSR mission launched towards Mars, followed by a NATO mission two month later. Mankind reached further into outer space in the following years, reaching Jupiter and Saturn. Jupiter became a large fuel deposit, as more and more fusion rectors were build by USSR and NATO and ships went from primitive anti-gravity assigned electronic engines to powerful mirror coil fusion engines, AM beam engines and lately to Impulse engines.

NATO and USSR forces put large bases and tankers into service to salvage the large volumes of Deuterium, Tritium and Helium-3.

The first large space ships were put into service and the Cold War became even more cold as both sides hid from each other in the vastness of the Solar System. Stalin had found that the vastness of space was even better for expansion and troop building than the space on Earth he had.

The Cold War continued and in 1979, Masamune Shirow developed the first Cybrain, followed by its total acceptance in 1984, when everyone in the NATO had a Cybrain.

Nearly simultaneous, the NATO and the USSR came onto a special piece of information in their Visitor data banks, leading to the common knowledge of large Interstellar Wars and that Earth and the Solar System were only a small piece of space, compared to the large Empires from four million years ago. So they started to build up their space based fleets, based on the latest technologies from the Visitor.

In 1983 a USSR and a NATO ship entered Jump Space independently from each other. But neither NATO nor USSR wanted to leave the Solar System yet, not with their 'small' fleets and their competitor. The Cold War slowly heated up again.

1997 Earth technology had long since raised to the standards of the Visitor, some even exceeding the Visitor's technology. Large Space Fleets waited in their bases or cruised through the System. More 2 billion people were living in the extra terrestrial colonies and 6 billion on Earth.

Earth was ready to appear on the Galactic Stage, but the NATO and the USSR didn't believe themselves to be ready, especially Stalin, who had live through several dozen assassination attempts.

But the decision was taken from the NATO and the USSR, when a lone space ship appeared out of FTL a little outside the Earth gravity well near NATO Side 2 an area of O'Neill Type 5 colonies orbiting L5.


	2. Chapter 2

Cold War

by Warringer

Chapter One

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"The first being of the Ancient Alliance had been woken in 1965, about seven years after the Visitor Conflict. It needed about six years to awake all one and a half million fugitives from stasis sleep. One and a half million people from six different races.

"The Ancients, a race that calls themselves one of the First Ones. They are a mono-gender extremely humanoid race. In fact every member of this race seems to be a female human supermodel. They also are anatomically correct when compared to a human female, it would even be possible to insert plug A into slot B, not that it would conceive new life.

"The Kartanin, a sleek humanoid feline race from a dessert planet. They are very humanoid, but with catlike faces. Instead of finger- or toe-nails they have razor sharp retractable claws. Male Kartanin are with around five feet eight a little taller than the females with around five feet two.

"While the Kartanin are basically cats, the race of the Wlatschides are basically wolfs. These about two meter tall digitigrade upright wolfs are the third race of the Ancient Alliance.

"The fourth race of the Ancient Alliance are the hydrogen breathing Maahk. These egg laying silicon and carbone based lifeforms are not having emotions like humans or other races and tend to be very logical. They are also a race that reproduces very fast, each female laying up to twelve eggs every six month. In less than twenty years their number got from under 50.000 to six millions at Maahkor, their colony on the Moon near the Great Trench.

"The Hauri are the fifth race. They are a very humanoid race, about two meters tall and seem to be little more than leather like skin over their skeletons. But their looks are deceiving as they are stronger than most humans. Their green eyes normally seem to be glowing in a demonic fire.

"The last race are the Swoon, the strangest of the Ancient Alliance. They resemble feet long cucumbers with two legs, for arms and a small surprisingly humanoid face.

"Since they have been waken from stasis, they are very grateful to the NATO and now fully accepted members a good number of them working closely with humans. Most of them have settles down near the Great Trench, while some went to Earth to live in cities like New York, London or Berlin."

-- exert from a lecture of NATO history at the University of Tel'Aviv

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21. March 2001

Slowly the Akula-class recon vessel _Suchoi_ floated in space near NATO Side 2, one of the O'Neil colony areas. It was operating under full EMCON, not a single EM signal coming from it as it listened to the EM signals coming from the NATO Side. Optronic computers filed through the streams of data coming from its passive sensors, trying to find new information about NATO operations.

It was essential that the _Suchoi_ was there and both sides knew it. The NATO knew that a KGB recon vessel was near their Side and the KGB knew that the NATO knew. Side 2 was especially of interest for the KGB. One of the main Howaldtswerke - Deutsche Werft GmbH Space Docks was located there and it was rumored that NATO build one of their new Graf Zeppelin class super carriers in that dock.

Even if the _NSS_ _Graf_ _Zeppelin_ went through its trails near Titan and the KGB watched it closely, they knew next to nothing about the newest implementation of NATO fleet doctrine. All they did know however were just rumors. Rumors that the _Graf_ _Zeppelin_ wasn't only a super carrier but also a possible ship killer, rumored to carry a pair of mass drivers larger than any mass driver on Soviet super dreadnoughts.

Until now the KGB didn't knew that these rumors were true. The two thousand three hundred meter long _Graf_ _Zeppelin_ didn't only carry four CAW worth of Starfuries, but also a good number of weapons that wouldn't be out of place on a battle cruiser, a pair of really large cap ship killer mass drivers and enough missiles to spam the fire control systems of a small Soviet Cruiser Task Force.

Some of the data _Suchoi_ received would be very useful to KGB, but only if the ship would have survived a, for them, unfortunate coincidence. The last thing the sensors of the Akula class ship registered was the sudden increase of gravimetrical forces right on top of the ship. It was too fast for the computer to come to the right conclusion that a Jump Point to Jump Space opened, as the whole ship imploded, exploded and was ripped apart at the same time by the gravity sheers coming from the opening Jump Point.

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It was a few days ago that Commander Soral Molari had gotten new orders from Centari Prime. A Centauri merchant doing the route from the Centauri system of Courtor to the Markab system Tiree had reported strange tachyon signals coming from a small system near his route. He hadn't been the first to report them, but in the last years those reports had grown more numerous.

Normally that wouldn't be of much interest to the Emperor or the Centaurum, but the merchant had been a member of the Refa family and Lord Refa had made pulled some strings. And now Commander Molari was on his way to this system in the middle of nowhere.

He was ordered to take a look at the system and than report back to Centauri Prime. With any luck, the system could turn out to be a system worth conquering. But the defeat through the Narn still sat deep, so they had to be careful. But he was confident that his four Vorchans could deal with anything he would meet, should it turn out to be hostile.

"We have reached the position," he heard the navigator say.

Molari nodded. This system didn't have a Jump Gate, but the nearby hyperspace lane was enough to give them the navigational information they needed to reach this system.

"Prepare jump back to normal space."

The Jump Engines of his Vorchan needed some time to charge. As the time was up they started to tear at the barrier between normal space and hyperspace, twisting it until a rift opened between the two layers of space and opened up to a hole the Vorchan could use to leave hyperspace.

For the first few moments nothing happened, other than the four Vorchans bombarding the surrounding space with radar and laser pulses to get a good first look around.

"Commander," one of the sensory operators said unbelievingly," You should look at this."

Molari blinked once and than looked at the main screen of the bridge and the picture it showed now. Than his jaw opened in shock at the picture in front of him. Dozens of silver looking rotating cylinders were hanging in the inky blackness of space. Sensory data appeared next to the picture, telling him that each of the cylinders was about 60 kilometers in length and eight kilometers in diameter.

He closed his mouth after a few moments and swallowed. Those things were huge.

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The Bremerhafen Space Dockyards of Howaldtswerke - Deutsche Werft GmbH was busy. The _NSS_ _Thielmann_, the second Graf Zeppelin super carrier of the NATO neared completion and NATO wanted to introduce her into service as soon as possible. Smaller shuttles, space going cyborgs and robots were putting the last hexagonal modules of the dozen meter thick carbon based armor to the still exposed areas of the carbon steel main hull, while others were slowly installing armored antennas and put some of the retractable AEGIS turrets through trails.

In the stern area, the three large fusion drives fired for a few moments at low power, without moving the large one hundred million ton vessel from its spot, only if the ship activated its gravitational fields it would move with a maximum acceleration of twenty gees.

But the _Thielmann_ wasn't the only ship that neared her completion. Several missile destroyers, cruisers and battle cruisers were also nearing their completion, forming the _Thielmann's_ task force.

The Bremerhafen Space Dockyards were one of the most important dockyards of the NATO and so she was protected by three Dreadnought and two Carrier Task Forces, while two armed space stations, several dozen weapons platforms and a single object dubbed colony laser presented the fixed defenses of this dockyard. The Pentagon was more than confident that this would be enough to hold back any Soviet Force long enough that reinforcements could arrive before they reached the dockyard.

Aboard of the _NSS Iowa_, the heavy dreadnoughts of Dreadnought Task Force 10. life went as usual and people were bored from the job of guarding the dockyard and the NATO colony side. It was common knowledge that Stalin was currently busy in the asteroid belt near Ceres, no doubt something that was bad for NATO.

The sudden explosion near the Side Two however changed the bored atmosphere. Crewmen ran towards their posts as General Quaters was sounded aboard the ship and all sensory systems went online and listened and looked out into the direction of the explosion.

"Okay, what do we have here?" Rear Admiral Samuel Danniels said as he entered the bridge.

The commander of the _Iowa_, Captain Kewok, a Wladschid, turned around, his gray eyes showing confusion. Danniels knew that it had to do with whatever happened to sound General Quarters.

"We measured a Jump Point opening just outside of the gravitational well of the Earth-Moon system," he said with a slightly growling voice," It was followed by an explosion."

"Sir," he was interrupted by one of the sensory operators," Four unidentified objects left the Jump Point."

"Do we have a silhouette scan?"

"Not yet, Admiral, but we get it in about one minute."

Danniels nodded and looked at the lupine commander of _Iowa_.

"What do you think?"

Kewok looked at one of the screens showing the reflex data from the Jump Point.

"I don't know," he said," It doesn't look like the Jump Engine signature of the Soviets. The closest would be the signature of a Vorlon client race from the War."

Danniels nodded. Kewok had been a low ranked officer during the War between the Ancient Alliance and the Shadow-Vorlon Alliance, before he went into stasis aboard one of the seven ships that crashed on the moon, about two million years ago. After waking he had been the first to as NATO to enter service and he had become something of prime example for other woken aliens.

"Not after two million years," Danniels said.

"We don't know that, Admiral."

"Sirs, we have enough data from the silhouette scan."

Minute differences during scanning of the four contacts with LIDAR and Radar had been calculated and formed a vague silhouette of the four vessels, appearing on the screen. The vessel on the screen had something of a bird of pray. Four swept forward wings and a thin main body.

Danniels looked at Kewok, who shook his head. He had never seen such ships.

"Well, than," he said," I guess we have a First Contact at our hands."


	3. Chapter 3

Cold War

by Warringer

Chapter Two

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Slowly life came into the Task Forces surrounding and guarding the large Bremerhafen Space Dockyards, a giant structure build into the hull of a 60 kilometer long Type 5 O'Neil colony. Dreadnought Task Force 10 slowly moved away from their guarding positions and turned about to face the proposed alien ships.

The _NSS Iowa_ was the largest of the ships of DTF 10, a large nearly two kilometer long heavy dreadnought with a flat and wide silhouette with the dark gray color of it's carbon based armor, divided into hexagonal sections over the actual carbon-steel hull. She was sporting two large turrets armed with dual Ion Beam Canons capable of tearing deep trenches into the armor used by Soviet vessels. One of these turrets was located on the dorsal hull, the other on the ventral hull. Smaller turret mounts sporting rail guns, Plasma Pulse weapons and even classical gattling cannons for Close In Weapon Support were dotting the rest of the surface while Vertical Launch systems gave her a good missile capacity.

The rest of DTF 10 were fifteen smaller Arleigh Burke class missile destroyers, eight Tigonderoga class cruisers, three Kirishima class heavy cruisers and a single Essex class escort carrier.

As the Task Force pulled away from Bremerhafen, it was clear that even the smallest vessels of DTF 10, the Arleigh Burke destroyers were fifty meters longer than the ships that had appeared from Jump Space.

The vessels were seen from several of the Colonies at NATO Side 2, as they accelerated with ten gee, their fusion engines burning at only half power.

But several smaller stealthed recon drones had already reached the four unknown vessels, optical and passively scanning them. They were transmitting their results back to _Iowa_, but instead of using radio broadcasts, they used tight beam laser communication, preventing detection by the unknown ships.

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Commander Molari swallowed as he looked over the sensory information. This was insane. Everything in this system was large. Larger than anything he had seen up to date. The information indicated billions of people living on the third planet and the surrounding space borne structures that seemed to be colonies. Millions had to live in the rest of the system.

He closed his eyes and prayed to the gods for guidance. He wasn't exactly religious, but now...

"Ship movements," the sensory technician said and the screen changed again.

Twenty eight contacts moved away from the large concentration of large cylindric colonies towards their position. Molari swallowed again as he though about the implications of the things he had already seen. Even if the Vorchans could destroy the incoming ships, they could be more than able to compensate with the number of vessels.

He doubted that this system could be invaded easily.

A few moments later he looked at the silhouette scans of the ships. Frontal attacks would be a problem as those ships had a very sleek frontal silhouette and presented only the barest hints of their hull forward. Molari was willing to bet that the bows of these ships were especially heavily armored.

EM silhouettes came next and he swallowed again. The energy produced by those ships were huge. Either they were very ineffective in their energy use or the just plain needed this energy. But for what? Weapons?

He started to debate with himself. He could try and declare that this system was now of the Centauri and try to occupy it, but he doubted that it would work. The best was to make a formal First Contact, something that didn't really go against his orders. He was only a recon after all.

Yes, a peaceful contact was his safest bet at this moment.

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Much like the _Suchoi_, another KGB vessel was drifting in space near NATO Side 2. The Red October was a new Borey class vessel, specially build with the latest stealth technology of the Soviet Navy. No one in NATO did even know that these ships existed, as they had been build on Kevlavik Station, hidden deep within the Kuiper Belt.

Captain Marco Ramius drank from his tea as he studied the data screen in front of him. _Suchoi_ had failed to answer to the tight beam laser transmissions of the _October_ and so he had to assume that the Akula had been destroyed when those four ships appeared from Jump Space.

Ramius sighed. Captain Romachenkow had been a good man.

Slowly his glance went towards the data they had from the unknown new ships. It was really very useful that the NATO had decided to scan with such a power output. A good amount of the Radar and LIDAR impulses were reflected itno the direction of the October and so the optronics were able to get every last bit of information about these ships.

About 600 meters in length and a wingspan of around seven hundred. EM emissions coming from them showed pretty high power usage, but it was impossible to say what kinds of weapons they were carrying.

He grit his teeth as he noticed that there was increased activity at NATO Side 2. Especially since one of the Task Forces guarding the Dockyard there was moving to intercept the unknowns. It wouldn't be good it NATO made First Contact to the Aliens. They already had gotten the Visitor and the fugitives from the ship.

He turned around to face the political officer, Ivan Putin.

"I know what you want to say," he said and placed his cup of tea on the data table," And I guess I want the same."

He turned to one of the radio operators.

"I want a tight beam connection to Lunograd."


	4. Interlude 1

Cold War

by Warringer

Interlude One

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3. May 1958

Colonel James Corvin looked up at the large construct in front of him. Large flood lights were bathing it in bright white light.

"So that is the real _Enterprise_," he noticed, while Werner von Braun smiled smugly next to him.

"Yes, she is," von Braun said," Much better than the thing we build in Cape Canaveral, isn't it?"

Corvin noted the sheer size of the large space ship that would bring the first men to the moon and land next to the Visitor at the Great Trench.

"Much better," he said.

The lift cage started to move and pulled up the side of the large underground hall in the Mojave Dessert. Corvin couldn't help but shake his head. He couldn't really believe that von Braun and Goddard had managed to design such a large space ship. It was different to the sleek rocket ships from the things in movies and comics. The fake at Cape Canaveral was closer to those rocket ships.

The real _Enterprise_ on the other side...

A large spheric object with four large muzzles of fusion engines a fourth of the diameter above the ground, with a number of hangars in the lower decks. This was only possible due to anti gravity allowing to lift such a mass into space and to the moon.

"How large is she?"

Von Braun shrugged.

"About one hundred fifty meters in diameter."

Corvin stared back at the large sphere as the lift cage stopped at a bridge that let people go into the ship itself and von Braun opened the door of the cage.

"Are you coming, Colonel?"

Corvin had to shake his head free before he could follow von Braun.

"You Germans aren't letting things only be half done, do you?"

Von Braun chuckled.

"Maybe," he answered," But this is the only thing that stands between the Visitor and Stalin."

Corvin shook his head again.

"To think that we have to bring weapons into space..."

Von Braun sighed.

"It's not possible to save the being in stasis in another way. Who knows what Stalin would do to them."

Corvin shuddered. He had heard stories from the USSR. Those stories reminded him of the book he had read some time ago, 1984.

"And what will we have to stand against Stalin?"

Von Braun smiled a bit evilly.

"Some specially designed Shermans and King Tigers. And of cause about two hundred men infantry. And internal weapons of the _Enterprise_. Well, mostly heavy artillery and missiles. It should be enough to give hell to the Soviets."

Corvin nodded a few times.

"And how long do we have to train?"

"About two month. Rommel and Eisenhower want to be on the moon before the end of the year. Not to mention that Korolew will start the Soviet ship in October."


	5. Chapter 4

Cold War

by Warringer

Chapter Three

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The office was filled with the music of Nirvana, while the inhabitant reached for the bottle of Scotch that stood on the desk.

Admiral Athema poured the Scotch into a small glass and downed it at once. Kurt Cobains music fit her depressed mood. It was a pity that Cobain had killed himself in Seattle, he had been a genius.

The source of her depression was floating as an holograpic projection in front of her. For years she had hoped the best, that the last parts of the Ancient Alliance had managed to leave the the galaxy and join the other First Ones beyond the Rim. But the picture in the hologram had destroyed these hopes.

A small NATO frigate, the _NSS_ _Discovery_, had dived deep into Jump Space, using the natural Tachyon pulses of several Pulsars for navigation, to get to the staging area for the Great Escape, as some had called it. Just two days ago the _Discovery_ had returned.

The staging area had been a large graveyard in space. Millions of ships were floating in the system in various stages of destruction. It was impossible to tell who had destroyed the ships, bit there were too many ships of the Vorlons, Shadows and their client races not to know that they had been responsible for all this.

Athema had seen many things in her now two thousand years of life and she knew that she would see much more during the rest of her life. She was still young for an Ancient after all and twenty thousand years of life were the norm. And still... She was the eldest of the Ancients that had been in the seven ships that had crashed on the moon after the Vorlon-Shadow ambush.

She closed her eyes and silently started to repeat Kurt Cobains lyrics of Lithium.

She had seen the worst of the Vorlons, the Shadows and their client races. She had seen how the Shadows had ignited fusion reactions that turned the atmosphere of Maahk worlds into suns. Seen how Death Clouds ate away Swoofon. And seen how her homeworld Altan had been cracked by a Vorlon Planet Destroyer.

The pictures of the destroyed Grand Fleet that should have left the Galaxy only fueled her hate for the other Two First One races.

For a moment she smiled evilly, thinking about the Omega Protocol of both NATO and the Soviets. She had done too much for the Omega Conference eight years ago in Geneva to succeed. Hopefully it would prevent both Shadows and Vorlons to discover the truth about the humans and their technology too fast and make it possible to defend against them.

But it would be years until the NATO OMEGA FLEET was finished in the depth of Jupiters atmosphere.

"Admiral," she heard after a while and looked up and towards the door of her office into the face of her human secretary.

"Yes," she answered and poured herself another Scotch.

"We have news from Destroyer Task Force 10. Four unknown contacts have left Jump Space near NATO Side 2."

"Soviets?"

"No, ma'am. Admiral Danniels thinks of a possible First Contact situation."

Athema narrowed her eyes.

"Get me a secure Gold Channel to Danniels."

Her secretary nodded and closed the door.

Athema downed her Scotch and decreased the volume of the music. The holograpic display with the space graveyard disappeared and made place for the face of Admiral Danniels.

"Admiral, we have to talk."

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It was normal for the comrades of the Soviet Union to be observed by hidden camera eyes of the countless optronic surveillance systems of the Ministry of Internal Peace. Stalin himself had ordered for such a system to be constructed and there weren't many places that were without the omniscient eyes of Internal Peace. The office of Grand Admiral Juri Andreyewich Kobalew was one of the few places without Internal Peace eyes. It was free of all surveillance devices the Ministry tended to use.

Admiral Kobalew was grateful for this little bit of absolute privacy his rank gave him. He had seen the last few raids of Stalin through the lines of his 'trusted' subordinants after the defeat on the moon. He knew how paranoid Josef could be. That had changed when he had seen the information about the 'Great Enemy', the Shadows and Vorlons, of the Ancient Alliance and knew that there was someone out there who was much more dangerous to him.

Kobalew had read Wells' 1984 and knew that the similarities between Oceania and the Soviet Union were striking. They were intended to be.

But Kobalew had other things to think about. Four unknown non-NATO ships had left Jump Space just outside of the Earth-Moon gravity well near NATO Site 2 and the Bremerhafen Space Docks.

It was to early for any First Contact with other Aliens aside from the survivors of the Ancient Alliance. OMEGA FLEET wasn't nearly finished. Only about two dozen ships had been finished and now Captain Ramius wanted to tell everyone about the existence of it by bringing _Red_ _October_ out into the open for a First Contact with a race that could as well be a client race of the Shadows or the Vorlons.

He closed his eyes for a moment, listening to Mozart and drinking tea.

The problem was that Red October was the only ship that could intercept the unknown ships before the NATO Destroyer Task Force 10 could do it.

He shook his head.

Maybe it would be the best if he talked to Josef first.


	6. Chapter 5

Cold War

by Warringer

Chapter Four

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Slowly Destroyer Task Force 10 came to a stop, about ten thousand kilometers distant to the four unknown ships. It was a First Contact situation and even if everyone aboard the ships hoped that everything would go right, they were prepared for the worst, be it that the unknown aliens fired upon them or that the Soviets came from out of nowhere.

Soviets coming out of nowhere was normal. Every Soviet ship seemed to be outfitted with active and passive Stealth systems and one or two times a Soviet ship had appeared right on top of a NATO Task Force. It tended to fuel some of NATO Fleet Commands paranoia a bit more than the general fear of Shadows and Vorlons.

Every ship of the Task Force had active fire solutions in case of hostile moves from the aliens, ready to unleash their weapons on the slightest increase of EM emissions in the areas the recon drones had perceived as weapon systems.

EM emissions were a good thing and modern ship commanders had a hard time to believe the stories of older personal about times when they only had active radar and LIDAR systems and no way to know if a Soviet ship was activating its weapons or not.

_Iowa_ was in the center of the formation, its two dual Ion Beam Cannons pointed at the lead ship of the alien force, surrounded by its cruiser and destroyer screen backing it up to the front and also ready to unleash their weapons.

Admiral Danniels stood near the back of the bridge of Iowa, his eyes pointed into the general direction of the holographic projections showing the four unknown vessels. Kewok was also looking at the projection, but he seemed to have zoned out a bit and Danniels knew that he was directly drawing informations from the ships computer through his cybrain.

Suddenly an alarm went through the bridge and the rest of the ship. The holographic projection changed and showed a dark red contact between DTF 10 and the unknowns. It had suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

"Soviets," Kewok spat out.

Wlatschides were a people that loved its freedom and hated the restrictive Soviet Culture with every fiber of their beings.

Data streamed over the projection and started to show everything the sensors had aquired so far and continued to show new data every second.

"Why did I know this would happen," Danniels asked with a sigh.

Than he concentrated on the wire less com link of his cybrain, directly getting the data and filing through it.

As he saw the data, he raised an eyebrow. The new Soviet ship had to be a new development, because he only could remember one ship that had a rotating section as part of its design. It seemed to be a refinement of the Akula design, NATO codename Nova. It lacked the many heavy weapons of the Nova, but whatever the rotating section was, it looked like it could hold a whole lot of missiles.

Danniels had to remember the _Leonov_, a Soviet experimental ship. It had been the only ship up to date with a rotating section. It had been frigate sized, but recon data from that ship had shown that those rotating section had be loaded to the brim with ship to ship missiles. It had only rotated to mislead everyone who looked at the ship. But it had also shown that the Soviets had found a way around the gyroscopic effect of those rotating sections, as the Leonov had had the same maneuverability of normal frigates.

Kewok cursed in his mother language, a long stream of growls and barks and a young Wlatschid ensign, who entered the bridge to begin his shift, drew his tail between his legs and stumbled back. Kewok ignored him, but Danniels noticed it, again wondering how similar the Wlatschides were to wolfs and dogs.

"We have a targeting solution for the Soviet ship," one of the weapons officers said and a small look to the weapons display, showed Danniels that the two dual Ion Beam Cannons had turned to target the new Soviet ship.

He had to smile as he imagined the face of the Soviet captain. He had to know that one of NATOs most powerful ships was just targeting him.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

"Captain, the _Iowa_ is targeting us."

Ramius drew his mug of tea to his mouth and took a sip. Most other Soviet Captains would have started to panic at the threat of being targeted by an Iowa class heavy dreadnought. But not so Marco Ramius and all captains that had been his XOs.

He merely looked towards fire control.

"Give me a targeting solution for the Iowa and all of its escorts."

The rotating section of _Red_ _October_ was its greatest weapon. It was meant to lure any enemy, besides NATO maybe, into thinking that the Borey class had only rather primitive technology that they needed centrifugal forces to simulate gravity. In reality the rotating sections were just really large missile pods. More than eight hundred tubes for R-39 ship to ship missiles, called SS-N-22 by NATO, armed with a 2 MT nuclear device and two reloads for each tube.

_Red_ _October_ and all other vessels of the Borey class was called missile dreadnoughts by Fleet Command. But that didn't mean that they were only using missiles, even if they were the ships primary weapon.

Nothing said 'You are screwed' as eight hundred missiles launched at the same time by a single ship.

Still Ramius knew that the _Octobers_ missiles would be swatted out of space by the NATO AEGIS systems before they could enter ten kilometers from every ship. They needed more than one Borey to missile spam an AEGIS.

"You know that they are getting good EM data of us?" his XO said and Ramius shrugged.

"So they do," he answered and drank from his tea," Admiral Kobalew's orders say to give them a good look if they are doing it anyways. The Borey will be introduced into normal fleet at any rate, not that NATO knows about its existence. I guess we won't be getting back into OMEGA FLEET now."

He looked at a small screen and at the hawk-like space ships that hung in space in front of _Red October_.

"Hail them."

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Commander Soral Molari grew more and more nervous. He couldn't help it. He knew that he was supposed to be a rock in the storm, but it was hard to be under these circumstances.

He had awaited a rather primitive civilization that just started to get into space. He got a race that had build giant structures that were colonies. He had awaited to see some small ships as large as a shuttle. He got ships that were larger than his Vorchan.

And now a single ship as large as a Primus, with a giant rotating section had appeared out of nowhere. No Jump Point opening, no side effects like the strong blur effect of the Minbari stealth devices. It had just blinked into existence between his little fleet and the larger fleet that had come on an intercept course from the giant structures.

He forced himself to breathe in and out deep to clear his mind and wished some alcohol to help him with getting clearer.

This was not going according to his expectations.

"Commander, we are hailed by the ship with the rotating section."

He looked at the communication technician.

"Put it on the screen."

The screen in front of him changed from showing the dark gray ship with the rotating section to showing a face.

It was a bearded face of a being that looked like a Centauri, just that the beings hair was trimmed short and didn't form the characteristic hair crest of the Centauri.


	7. Chapter 6

Cold War

by Warringer

Chapter Five

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Lieutenant Frank Norbert Stein cursed like only someone from the 'Ruhrpott', the premier German industry area, could. He was a crew member of _Iowa_ and currently off duty. And he was filing through his electronic copy of the 'Westfälische Rundschau', a newspaper from home. Schalke had lost against Borussia Dortmund, for the six time in the last few years, again at home. But that wasn't as bad as the fact that Bayern München would again win the German European Football League. So it was understandable that the man from Gelsenkirchen was in a foul mood.

"Lieutenant Stein, please report to the bridge," he heard the voice of the ships computer over the PA and his mood didn't improve as he placed his newspaper on his bed and stood up to report to the bridge.

Frank wasn't really a normal crew member of _Iowa_. He was a telepath, or teep as some called it. The only thing setting him apart from the other crew members was a small patch with the Greek letter Psi on the sleve of his standard Navy uniform.

Frank had studied psychology before he had entered service. Of cause his father, an Army Major, hadn't been very understanding towards his son that he had chosen to enter the Navy, but in the end he was grateful that his son had chosen to enter service anyway. Telepathic psychologists were in very high demand in the commercial sector.

Normally a good number of teeps that entered service went straight to the CIA or even Mossad if they were bold enough, but Frank was one of the few teeps that had been left in normal service for either Navy, Army or Marine Corps.

Frank wondered why he was ordered to the bridge. Normally his duty was to be the ships psychologist and there were a good number of the four thousand crew members that needed his help or evaluation.

He blinked a few times as he entered the bridge, wondering what had happened. Sure he was a teep, but it was against the ethic of NATO telepaths to just go and snoop in the minds of other people, even if they could do so.

Than his glance fell upon a pair of holograpic projections. One showed four strange birdlike ships and the other a ship that had vast similarities to Soviet designs.

Frank frowned. He didn't like Soviets. He knew how they treated their telepaths. The took them in as soon as they were discovered, and used drugs and cybernetic systems to wipe their minds clean and create a new mind for them, absolutely loyal to the KGB. He knew it because he had seen the mind of one Soviet Teep.

During a short stay on Freedom Station, a small transfer station in LEO, he had stumbled over the man during his first transfer. The man had tried to scan him, but as a P12, Frank had been able to block it and counterscanned. The programmed mind and the emptiness of it still gave him nightmares.

He walked up to Admiral Danniels and Captain Kewok.

"Reporting as ordered, sir," he said and saluted.

"At ease, Lieutenant," Captain Kewok said and looked at him," We have a little job for you."

Kewok nodded into the direction of the projection showing the four unknown ships.

"We have a First Contact situation," he said and than nodded towards the other projection," The Soviets tried to communicate with the unknowns, but were unable to talk to them."

It dawned Frank what he was about to be ordered. Babelfish duty. Using his telepathic ability to communicate with the unknowns.

"We want you to play translator for our try to communicate with the aliens," Danniels said.

Yep, Babelfish duty.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

"Close the channel," Molari said a bit unnerved.

He had stared at the alien, yet familiar face for the last about ten minutes and listened to the man on the other side talking in his strange language. And Molari was sure that the man didn't understand him. They simply weren'T able to talk to each other.

And there was something Molari didn't really understand. The ships that had approached him first were pointing their weapons at the ship with the rotating section, while the weapons of that ship were pointed at the small fleet. It didn't make sense. They couldn't be pirates of any kind, because in that case on of the ships would have fired already. Either at him or at each other.

"Commander, we are getting a transmission from the largest ship of the fleet."

"Open the channel," he ordered with a sigh. They wouldn't understand each other anyway.

The screen lit up, showing a larger piece of an unknown command center rather than a single face. The command center was different from that of his ship or that of any other Centauri ship.

Three beings were seen on the screen. A pair of Centauri like men and a animal like alien, all three in beige colored uniforms.

One of the Centauri like men started to speak and Molari could hear that he was using another languange as the man from the transmission before.

"- My name is Admiral Samuel Danniels,-" he could suddenly hear a voice in his mind,"- I am speaking to you through one of our telepaths, as our languages are to different to speak to each other with out a form of translator.-"

Molari nearly choked. A telepath on a vessel that seemed to be military. Who where those people?

"-On behalf of the NATO, I want to welcome you to our solar system,-" the voice of the telepath said.


	8. Interlude 2

Cold War

by Warringer

Interlude Two

-----------------------------------------------------------------

5. March 1995

Achmed Ibn Hazard breathed hard and grabbed his rifle a bit harder, only to release his grip after a few moments. It was hard to remember some things like being the pilot of one of the new Seburo Guges Mk I Landmate.

Landmates were a new development by the infamous Masamune Shirow, the developer of the cybrains. He had founded Seburo Mil Tech from the money he got from his cybrain production and started to develop new weapons and vehicles, like the Landmate Powered Armor Suits.

One of the smaller cameras on top of Achmeds Guges looked around the corner and he could see several T-80 tanks, APCs and power armored infantry moving towards the position of his partner. It was more or less normal that the Soviets tried to get into the Iran and the area around Mandali had been a war zone for about ten years now. And because of that fact, NATO R&D was using the area to try out new weapons and systems against the Soviets.

"Striker, you take out the command tank, I'll get the APCs."

Achmed could imagine how Jason Striker smirked behind the chest plate of his landmate, as he grabbed the large Seburo 80mm railgun in a rifle casing that was more than capable of punching right through the carbon armor of the tanks.

Striker pointed the railgun around the corner, the gunscope acting as his eyes as he targeted the lead T-80. Achmed targeted one of the APCs at the same time with an autocannon a smaller caliber of just 40mm.

"Now," Achmed said and fired.

Four projectiles left the barrel in less than a tenth second and punched their way straight through the thin armor of the APC. The first two projectiles were needed to get through the armor, while the other two turned into flechette and ripped into every passanger of the APC.

The same was true for the larger railgun of Striker. It pucnehd its way through the thick armor only using its velocity of more than Mach 12 and roasted the crew of the tank with a stream of armor turned plasma stopping it at the spot.

"Go go go," was Achmeds next order and the whole team of Landmates left their cover to enter a small scale battle that marked the beginning of Landmate warfare in the NATO.


	9. Chapter 7

Cold War

by Warringer

Chapter Six

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Ramius couldn't help but shoot a glare at his Political Officer. He was a pain in the ass, but that was the job of a Political Officer. Now he had 'washed' Ramius' head, because he had failed to make a real contact with the aliens and now it seemed as if the NATO was more successful. The connection between the _Iowa_ and the alien lead vessel was online for about ten minutes and there wasn't a sign that the connection would go offline any time soon. The fact that he could understand what Admiral Danniels said and that the commander of the alien ship seemed to answer was enough.

Ramius' Political Officer watched the devided holographic screen with interest.

"The man next to the capitalistic Admiral is a telepath," the Political Officer said," It seems that they are using the telepath to talk to each other."

Ramius frowned. Why hadn't he thought about that. Especially since his Political Officer was a telepath.

In fact all Political Officers were telepaths, identical clones that were produced to give every ship a telepathic Political Officer that would do a permanent surface scan of all crew members. Political Officers were identical P11 class telepaths with cybernetic modifications that allowed them to constantly scan up to 600 crewmembers. A ship like the Red October with 1100 crewmembers had four Political Officers, or rather one Political Officer with four different bodies, as the cybernetic implants linked the bodies togethe to one person, through Ramius wasn't sure if they were people at all.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

**A few hours later**

"I want to protest," Ambassador Kirjakow as he stormed into the Oval Office.

NATO President William Clyton groaned internally at the Ambassador. All Kirjakow did was protesting. About everthing NATO did in space. And it didn't really help that he was always escorted by one of the Political Officer clones Stalin was so fond of. At times like these Clyton was glad that the whole city of Washington D.C. was protected by several anti telepathic fields.

"What is it this time, Iljitsch?"

"Four alien spaceships entered the system two hours ago. You intercepted them with a whole Destroyer Task Force and dared to contact them with one of your capitalistic telepaths."

Clyton groaned again. All the Soviets did was raving against the 'bad capitalistic NATO that prevented everyone to see that true enlightenment was found in communism', as they liked to put it.

"They are a communistic people as all advanced civilizations have to be. And you are trying to pull them from the true path."

Clyton wanted to shake his head. Sometimes he wondered exactly how Stalin had managed to make every citizen of the USSR into fanatics. They were worse than some of those rednecks in the South of the former USA. For them communism was the only way of life.

"From what I know, you did contact them first, but you didn't manage to talk to them. We on the other side did. And we are willing to share our information with the USSR in this case. All information we got during first contact and the translation matrix that is currently programmed."

Kirjakow blinked. He hadn't dreamed that the NATO would share their information woth the USSR. He smelled a rat in this one.

"Information you will manipulate, no doubt."

Clyton sighed.

"This information falls under the Omega Protocol. We are not going to manipulate it."

That shut Kirjakow up. He knew what the Omega Protocol was as he had been one of the people who had designed it. He finally nodded.

"In that case I will leave now, Comrade Clyton."

Clyton grunted as the Sovier Ambassador left the Oval Office. He hated it to be called Comrade.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Commander Molari sighed, the long contact with that telepath had given him a headache and it wasn't something he would want to try again. He looked at one of the screens. He had put all available data and everything the telepath had told him into a crystal and transfered it to one of the ships of his little fleet.

On the screen he could see that the ship was in position, ready to jump into hyperspace and get the crystal back to Centauri Prime, while the rest docked with one of the NATOs giant stations and made a more intense first contact. It would prove to be interesting indeed.

The ship jumped into hyperspace and Molari sighed again. He needed to get something against this damned headache.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Frank sighed nearly at the same time as Molari had done so and shook his head. It was time to write that little report on the slightly deeper scan he had been ordered to do while acting as a babelfish.

It had been against his ethics, but Admiral Danniels had poked the fear of the Shadows and Vorlons everyone of Earth and the rest of the system shared, be it Soviets or NATOs. He hadn't found anything about Shadows or Vorlons, but he had found out that the orders of Commander Molari had been to either make contact or prepare an invasion.

Another part of his orders had been to scan some of the people next to Molari. Their minds had given him further informations, mostly about this Centauri Republic. From the minds and what little memories Frank had from his history lessons, he had to compare the Republic with Ancient Rome. Future would tell how similar those two nations were.


	10. Chapter 8

Cold War

by Warringer

Chapter Seven

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The years after the First Contact were the years of great change for the USSR and NATO.

The Centauri sold the construction plans for Jump Gates to both nations of Earth and each of them went to build their own Jump Gate, the Nato build theirs near NATO Side 2, while the USSR build theirs near their most important colony on the planetoid Ceres.

Star Charts also came from the Centauri, but both Earth nations were only interested in the actual data, but not in the information about the Jump Routes between the Gates, they had a way to navigate Einstein Space from Jump Space after all, using the natural Tachyon emmisions from known pulsars to estamine their position in Jump Space compared to Einstein Space.

The first trade routes were established with the Centauri while ships went out to make First Contacts with more of the other races in Known Space as the space known to the Centauri soon was called.

In about two years both human nations made contact with most of the races in Known Space, save for the Minbari, a race that was marked as 'Potentially under influence of Shadows or Vorlons'. The race of the Dilgar were also filed under this flag by NATO, while the USSR made contact with them.

It was also the time of colonization and by 2011, both nations had established colonies on twenty worlds and military outposts on other worlds. 80 million people went into outer space to colonize the New Frontier. 46 million Soviets colonized ten USSR planets and 34 million people colonized NATO planets.

At the same time the fleets grew to protect these new worlds from each other and the other races. But not only military fleets grew, trade fleets also grew to trade with the other races of Known Space.

One of the ships that was on a route between Tau Centi and the Narn colony of Kotok was the _Enrico Sanchez_, a 75 meter long Pallas class freighter, jump capable and able to enter an atmosphere to land. It would become a legend in the first interstellar conflict involving mankind.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Franklin O'Neill was born in South Side LA, and was a stereotypical black male, about two meters tall and build like a body builder, even if he didn't train for it. Even more stereotypical was the fact that he did belong to a gang for some time, before a friend of his father managed to get him out of it and put him into space as a small mechanic on a small freighter. It had been the best day of his life.

Now he was thirty six and the Chief Engineer of the _Enrico_ _Sanchez_ for three years now and a capable man in the machine room. And he was walking through Katok, the capital city of Kotok with one of his best friends and his right hand, a female Kartanin born in Berlin in 1985 and too human in her beavior for her parents. Her name was Dao-Kay'Hey.

Dao was good two heads smaller than Franklin and build like the predator she was, but that didn't prevent her from having a strange mix of things she liked, like all things cute and cuddly and heavy machinery.

"What do you think," Dao asked and held up some sort of idol that looked like a Narn with a huge version of the male Narn reproductive organ as big as the idol itself.

Franklin couldn't help but stare at that thing. The penis of the Narn looked like a tentacle.

"Would be a great present for Ichiko, I guess."

Dao chuckled and grinned, or what could be called a grin for her, as she mangled the human facial expression. The Narn behind the table of this small bazar was shrinking back a bit as he saw the huge predatory teeth of the Kartanin.

"You can stop grinning, Dao. You scare the vendor."

Dao stopped grinning and scratched the back of her head a bit embarrassed. Now it was Franklins turn to chuckle and he shook his head.

"Well, how much for it?"

The Narn told them the sum for the small idol and Franklin looked at Dao before he tried to negociate, in the end paying only half of the price the vendor had given them before.

After having cheated the vendor they proceeded through the city, before stopping near an electro 4x4 that was from the _Sanchez_. A few moments later they found a familiar face in the crowd, not much of a challange seeing that the face belonged to the only other human in the city.

The face belonged to David Weissblum, a normal build very normal looking Jew from Tel'Aviv who would vanish in any human crowd. It was an open secret for the crew of the _Sanchez_ that he was an agent of Mossad and responsible for the destruction of several large factories on Regula before he had to go deep cover and was put on the _Sanchez_ to be a contact to the agents in the Narn Regime.

On the _Sanchez_ he was responsible for communication and did a good job with it. Not to mention that he was a very decent guy, through it wasn't all that hard to believe that he was able to kill someone in twenty different way with just his pinky finger.

"Yo, Dave," Franklin called out and Davids head shoot up from what ever he was doing.

David waved and finished his talk with one of the Narn in the crowd. Than after some moments he had navigated though the crowd, a small package in his hands.

"Something for a friend?" Dao asked, speaking English. They all were able to speak the language of the Narn, thanks to some software for their cybrains, so that they could talk to the Narn without a translator.

"Something for a good friend," David said and a slight raise of his eyebrow showed Franklin and Dao that Dave was talking about Mossad.

Dao than smirked and held up the idol and David couldn't help but stare at it as he tried to put the package into the 4x4.

"A little present for Ichiko," Franklin explained and David burst out into laughter.

"You want to give her that?" he asked and a grin split his face.

"Well, she is a cyborg using a shell that seems to be fifteen years old and likes to wear Japanese school uniforms."

David couldn't help but to chuckle again at imagining the face of Ichiko on seeing the tentacle like reproductive organ on the idol.

"You are..."

David could finish what he wanted to say as an intense flash of light appeared over the city, bathing it in an unearthly light, followed by a second and a third flash.

"What the hell..."


	11. Chapter 9

Cold War

by Warringer

Chapter Eight

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It had been a clear day in Katok and so it was perfectly possible for the three crew members of the _Enrico_ _Sanchez_ to see three mushroom clouds growing from three different spots, each about three kilometers distant to the city.

"What the hell..." was all Franklin could say as he stared at the mushroom that grew where the space port had to be. His mind raced as he remembered the movie 'The Day After' and the horrible things it had shown.

"No," Dao whispered and tried to hide behind Franklin.

In the distance there was a cloud that raced towards the city and the horrified Narn and humans.

"GET DOWN!" David screamed in Narn and threw himself to the ground, closely followed by most of the people in the small square they were on.

Franklin grabbed Dao as they got to the ground, doing his best to shield his best friend with his body. The cloud raced towards them and picked up rubble, tables, trash and even one or two helpless Narn of the ground as it raced over the city with nearly the speed of sound. The first wave was closely followed by a second and a third from the two other nuclear detonations.

Five minutes went by and the wind got down. Narn and the three humans slowly got up, but some Narn couldn't get up. They had been buried by some of the trash and rubble the shock waves of the detonations had carried and lost here when they hit the surrounding buildings. Only one or two of these buildings were still undamaged while most of them were damaged to some degree, some of them having burried helpless Narn inside the buildings.

There was a silence before the first injured Narn started to scream in pain and others called for help. In all this the human 4x4 had been untouched, the heavy frame had prevented it from being picked up by the shock waves. A Narn was laying next to the 4x4, his spine clearly broken as a shock wave had thrown him against the 4x4. Now he was on the ground, presumably dead if the growing pool of blood was any indication.

Franklin grit his teeth as he looked at the chaos around him as Narn tried to help the injured and burried. A look at Dao showed that she had gone into a shock, staring at the dead Narn next to the 4x4. He picked her up and slung her arms around her, trying to prevent her from seeing the carnage around themby pressing her face into his chest.

Davids face had become hard as stone as he looked around. The package he had just gotten was worthless now. He looked up at the mushroom clouds. One of them was raising above the space port, while the others rose above the garrison of Kator and the military space port. Precision strikes, something he had done himself enough times.

The additional sensors in his military grade Mk IV cybrain weren't picking up much radiation, indicating the use of catalytic fusion bombs and the little radiation he did pick up let him speculate about the yield of the three nukes. Each had been a 20 kt fusion bomb, detonating as ground burst.

And he knew only one star nation that used catalytic nukes besides NATO.

"Soviets," he spat out and looked at Franklin, who still pressed Dao against him.

The feline made noises that were the Kartanin version of crying.

"We need to get to the _Sanchez_," he said and Franklin nodded at him numbly.

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Above the planet of Kotok, the day had been a normal day. Ships came and ships left and no one was really interested in any thing. The few Narn vessels stationed at the planet were going on patrol, while the former Centauri space station above the planet was busy with the freighters that weren't able to land on the planet.

The routine changed to shock as several flashes of light appeared on the planet below, three of them near Katok. Panic came next as several high explosive charges destroyed on of the reactors of the station and each of the weapon emplacements, opening the station wide to the vacuum of space.

More than half of the stations crew and half of the visitors died before the air locks could be closed.

For ten minutes nothing happened and the ships near the station tried to leave the area in panic and complete disarray.

Than several jump points opened and a very powerful transmission overpowered any other transmission on any radio and tachyon channel.

"In the name of the Union of Socialistic Soviet Republics and General Secretary Joseph Stalin, we are annexing this system to free our oppressed communistic Narn brothers and sisters."

The message was looped as the brief first battle of Kotok began.

Still in complete disarray, the Narn defenders couldn't hope to fight of the Soviet battle group, consisting of a single Borey class missile dreadnaught, four Akula class battleships, eight Delfin class cruisers and about nine Putin class dropships

As the battleships and the cruisers accelerated to herd the commercial ships towards the station, all the Borey did was launching a single spread of missiles, fully well knowing that the point defense of the Narn was poor to non-existent. The commander of the Borey was right. Each of the defending Narn ships was hit by two R-39 anti cap ship missiles and were vaporized by their 2 MT warheads.

Most of the civil ships in the system were stopped by this show of force but a pair of jump-capable Vree saucers were able to leave the system, before the Soviet ships were able to intercept.

Two of the drop ships docked with the station and they only needed about an hour before they had complete control of the station. The other dropships rained down on the planet and its three cities to take over the planet.

Later that day several additional Soviet freighters would enter the system, bringing prefabed equipment to fortify the system.


	12. Chapter 10

Cold War

by Warringer

Chapter Nine

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Franklin was horrified as the 4x4 of the _Sanchez_ drove through the rubble that had once been a good sized city. Everywhere he could see Narn digging through the rubble and trying to help the injured. Now that they got closer to the Space Port, he could also see more and more Narn with burnt faces who were bleeding from their eyes as they had been literally cooked while looking at the fire ball from the detonating nuke.

Thankfully the 4x4 hadn't been damaged and they were able to make good time towards the Space Port. At least until a group of uninjured Narn stood in front of the vehicle and David had to stop.

Franklin couldn't really help but stare at the weapons of the Narn. Sure Kalashnikov's were pretty wide spread since the Soviets started to sell them, but to see six Narn with AK-74 particle rifles and red armlets printed with hammer and sickle.

"In the name of the workers, this vehicle is confiscated."

David cursed and shot a glance at Franklin.

"-The glove compartment,-" David said over the wireless comm that was standard for all cybrains,"- You know how to use a weapon?-"

Franklins face didn't change as he moved his hand towards the glove compartment to open it, grateful that the Narn weren't able to really look into the passenger cabin of the 4x4.

"-Of cause I can,-" he answered on the same way,"- I was in a gang for six years.-"

The glove compartment opened and a pair of caliber .50 Dessert Eagles fell from it. Franklin took one of the large handguns and armed it, while giving the other to David.

The Narn outside was getting impatient and pointed his AK-74 at David's head.

"Get out of the vehicle."

"Let me think," David said and surprised the six Narn," I'm in a city that was nearly destroyed by three nukes, want to get to the space port and am held up by six communists with weapons. What do you think we should do Franklin?"

"Lets get the hell outa here," Franklin said and pulled up his Dessert Eagle so that the Narn next to his door of the 4x4 could see it before it blew his head apart, while David mimicked his motions.

He gunned the motor of the 4x4 and raced straight through the four Narn that stood in front of the vehicle, squishing them underneath.

Through all this Dao was sitting on a rear seat, not really noticing anything of this, still in shock and not noticing anything.

Now as they drove towards the Space Port at a faster pace and Franklin looked at David.

"Now it is time you tell me what the hell is going on here."

David didn't take his look off the way he was driving the 4x4 as he answered.

"The Narn are getting a serious communist problem."

"What?"

The vehicle left the city and after some hundred meters drove onto the reinforced concrete of the Space Port.

"The KGB has inserted agents and advisers into the Narn Regime. There is a communistic underground movement that grew in the last years. It looks like they are now making their move. No doubt with the help of the Soviets."

Franklin just stared at David.

"The nukes were soviet nukes. 20 kiloton catalytic warheads, detonating as groundbursts."

"Shit."

David just nodded.

"Yes, shit."

Most of the buildings on and near the Space Port had been blown apart by the shock wave and weren't much more than heaps of rubble. Narn shuttles and smaller space ships had been thrown around like toys and were lying around like a giant kid had forgotten to clean up its room and had decided to set them on fire.

Franklin swallowed as they drove towards the place where the _Sanchez_ had landed. He didn't had the illusion that the ship had survived the nuke. And he didn't had the illusion that anyone had survived this near Ground Zero.

On their way towards the _Sanchez_, they passed Ground Zero, crater of a hundred meter diameter, still glowing from the heat of the detonation. David was glad that his sensors only measured a radiation of around a half Rad, too little to be deadly and thanked that it had been a clean nuke. But that didn't lessen the destruction.

Finally about five hundred meter distant to Ground Zero, they passed a pile of rubble that had once been a warehouse and the 4x4 stopped with David and Franklin staring.

The _Enrico_ _Sanchez_ was standing there, seemingly undamaged from the outside. They only thing that seemed to be damaged were the four fusion drives of the 75 meter long freighter.

"Well, I'll be," David said silently," The Pallas class can take a lot."

Franklin shook his head clear after hearing David talking and his mind already started to look for the damages of the ship. The warehouse seemed to have shielded the ship from the majority of the nukes blast. The only thing that hadn't been shielded were the four main drives, completely destroyed by flying rubble and the heat blast. There were also a few antennas missing, but the rest of the ship seemed to be in peak condition.

"Damn," he finally said," Even the atmospheric engines are intact. But I doubt that she will ever see the free space again. Not without a few says in dock for new engines."

"-Franklin?-" he than heard a voice with a latino accent over his comm,"- That you?-"

"-Yeah, Cap. You okay?-"

"-A bit rattled, but everything seems fine. What the hell happened?-"

Franklin looked at David who had to listen in with his mil spec cybrain. David just nodded and continued to drive the rest of the way towards the freighter.

"-A longer story, I guess.-"


	13. Chapter 11

Cold War

by Warringer

Chapter Ten

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Admiral Bernhard von Bülow stared at the holographic screen in front of him trying to melt it with his eyes.

"Wo zum Geier sind die Kerle hin?" he muttered and his right fist impacted into the projector lens, the force behind his cybernetic arm shattering it.

The holographic screen fizzled out of existence and von Bülow started to grumble under his breath as he tried to find an answer to his own question.

Something was up near Altain and Epsilon Indi. The Soviets were pulling together their forces over the last few weeks. Just three days ago those vessels had entered Jumpspace and disappeared right before the stealthed recon ships of the Navy could follow them.

Those ships could be on their way to anywhere. They could be sitting right on top of the colonies of Tau Ceti, Epsilon and Ceti and no one would be able to tell that they where there before they chose to attack. Well, there was the possibility of attacks against the Narn and the Gaim, but Intel hadn't any pointers into that direction.

He hated the Soviets with his very life. He all too well remembered the 'Red Army Faction' around Bader and Meinhof during 70s of the 20th century and what they had done to Germany and Europe. In the end Bader, Meinhof and most of the leaders of the RAF had been able to get into the USSR and away from justice.

Because of them he had lost his brother and father, because of them he had lost his right arm. Now he wouldn't let them take Tau Ceti or any of the frontier colonies.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Franklin grit his teeth as he linked to the datanet of the _Sanchez_, looking for any flag that indicated damages done to the systems.

"Damn," he muttered at the flags that were active.

The sensors of the Fusion Drives indicated that the nozzles had more holes than Swiss Cheese and that the magnetic systems were shortened. Only a complete refit would make it possible to use them, even of the Drives themselves were intact.

He cursed as he noted that the antennas and systems of the tachyon com were busted. The stress that had gone through the ship at the detonation had cracked the tank for the quantum fluid that was used to create the tachyons for the FTL communication.

And they needed to tell the NATO.

"So how bad is it?" Captain Ernando Aquilia, a young Spanish dreamer who had bought the _Sanchez_ to make his dream come true, which happened by the way, asked.

"It looks bad, Cap. This bird will never get into space again, at least without serious work in a dry dock."

"Shit," Ernando cursed," And to get to a dock, we need to get into space."

"Pretty much. But the good thing is that the atmospheric drives are still intact. We could get into the air and get the hell away from here. I'm not wanting to get into the line of fire."

"What about our guns?"

Franklin looked at his captain.

"Cap, those are just a pair of light PPCs. They will work good against Raiders, but they won't work against a MiG or a Suchoi. All we can do is get the hell away from here and look if we can't save a few Narn."

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David sighed as he looked at the large crate that stood in a corner of the main cargo bay of the _Sanchez_. He never had thought that he would be forced to open it so early. He tapped a small sensory button on the side, causing it to hover an inch above the ground so he could push it into the center of the cargo bay and open it.

"And I thought, I'd never find out what you got in there," he heard a young female voice from behind and sighed.

He turned to look at Ichiko, the quarter master of the _Sanchez_. She was a cyborg in the body of a Japanese fifteen years old girl and a serve fetish for school uniforms. In fact her entire clothes were school uniforms of several different Japanese schools.

"Well, there was never the need to open it,. Yet anyway."

Ichiko suddenly bounced towards the cargo bay and than around the crate. David couldn't help but stare at her for a moment, as she went from adult to small girl in less than the blink of an eye.

"Can I see it? Can I see it? Can I see it?"

David groaned. Ichiko was very strange indeed.

He shook his head clear trying to ignore the bouncing cyborg and pressed another sensory button as the crate was off the wall and halfway in the center of the cargo bay.

The crate split open at its corners and fell to the ground, the content being bathed in the light of the bay.

"Wai wai wai," Ichiko emitted and lauched herself at the object.

Now David was greeted by the sight on a five foot fifteen year old trying to hug a more than three times as large Guges-D landmate. There was a meaty sound echoing through the cargo bay as David's face followed the gravity of the planet and slammed into the deck.


	14. Chapter 12

Cold War

by Warringer

Chapter Eleven

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Grand Admiral Juri Andreyewich Kobalew smiled as he looked over the reports of the attacks on Narn, Gaim and Cascan space. The orbital assaults on Kotok, Dra'Shii, N'Chack'Fah and Silkan had been successful. Now all that was needed were the planetary assaults and the construction of forwards bases for the next step.

He leaned back in his padded chair and reached for a small cub with tea and vodka. This little gamble Joseph was going for hopefully worked. Especially if the bases at Coriana and Sin'Talith were finished and their existence leaked to Mossad.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Tau Ceti Station was the base of the Tenth Frontier Fleet, a massive Bremerhafen class dockyard station orbiting the double Mars sized planet Tau Ceti II. Like most of the Frontier Bases, the station was lacking about half of its shipyard capability for an increased number weapons.

Tenth Fleet counted 150 vessels, spread to seven Task Forces. Two were Carrier Task Forces, consisting of a large Graf Zeppelin class super carrier and two Enterprise class carrier, four Essex class escort carriers and six Arleigh Burke class missile destroyers. Three were Dreadnaught Task Forces, consisting of a single Iowa, fifteen smaller Arleigh Burkes, eight Tigonderoga class cruisers, three Kirishima class heavy cruisers and a single Essex class escort carrier. The last two Task Forces were Cruiser Task Forces of two Kirishimas, eight Tigonderogas and twelve Arleigh Burkes.

It was a force strong enough to defend the three worlds of the Ceti sector, Tau Ceti II, Ceti V and Epsilon I. Of cause these worlds had smaller picket ships protecting them, but those vessels were little more than the gunboats of the space age, only armed with a hand full of missiles and rapid fire Ion Pulse and Plasma Pulse weapons. Enough to hunt down Raiders in the area but not to defend a system against the Soviets for longer than maybe an hour.

Admiral von Bülow was the commander of this force and he would be damned if the Soviets would set a foot into NATO space without going through him first. About an hour ago, he had split up his forces. A Carrier Task Force, a Dreadnaught Task Force and a Cruiser Task force had gone to Ceti and Eridani, while his _Tirpitz_ and her Dreadnaught Task Force. Tau Ceti Station was more than enough to take the roles of a Carrier and a Cruiser Task Force.

Von Bülow grit his teeth as he stared at the data in front of him. Several NATO freighters hadn't been on schedule and the companies that employed them started to complain about presumed Raider or Pirate attacks. Slowly but surely he started to think that he had been wrong. Not the Ceti sector had been the target of the Soviet fleets, they had gone after Narn space.

"Those sneaky bastards..." he muttered.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Captain Daniel McMichaels frowned. Life got complicated in the last years. Ever since both the USSR and the NATO had finally pushed into outer space and created the New Frontier as the NATO called it.

He looked around on the CIC of the _Francis_ _Drake_ and sighed. He was a pirate, so what? He had made good money with the raids on smaller colonies of the Narn, Centauri and races of the Leage. The base of operations of his small company of pirates was a small system called Sector One by the Centauri. There wasn't much to know about the system, it had a small Centauri colony, but they weren't interested in the asteroid belt that was far out in the system.

McMichaels had started out with a small ship and a small, entirely human crew. Now he was in control of a ship they had found in this system, crashed into the asteroid that now was their base. The ship happened to be a 900 meter long Hauri battle cruiser and they had been able to salvage and repair it. It was amazing how intact two million year old technology could be when it was exposed to hard vacuum.

Of cause the _Francis_ _Drake_ wasn't only a Hauri ship anymore, too much modifications had been made to it to mount weapons of every race in Known Space. They even had a Soviet Cloaking Device.

He looked at his crew in CIC, they were also of every race in Known Space, humans, Narn, Brakiri, Markab, Pakmara, he had even several members of the Ancient races as part of his crew, even an Ancient, who happened to be his XO. In the last years they had learned that they had much in common, especially that they disliked to be compared to Raiders.

Raiders were raging beasts, destroying every ship they were able to get and stealing all their freight. His Pirates on the other hand were much more civilized. The ships they intended to steal from were stopped with the help of tractor beams, possible weapons destroyed and the crew was able to get away with their freight gone. They treated everyone the same. They were more like the not so historic 'good' pirates displayed in old human movies than anything else.

Now it was time to get off some of their loot and McMichaels had decided that it was time to try out Kotok for their drop off point. So the _Francis_ _Drake_ was escorting a pair of Pallas class freighters, in case some Raiders tried something stupid.

"Activate Cloaking Device and prepare to leave Jump Space," he orders and his crew complied.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

"You brought a Landmate on my ship?" Aquilia asked as he glared at David.

David sighed and looked at his Landmate. Ichiko was still hugging the damn thing. Mentally he added a serve Mecha fetish to her School uniform and lolikon fetishes.

"Yes," she said and sighed again," They are considered standard issue for agents like me."

"Well," Franklin added," It could turn out to be useful, Cap. We need everything we have at the moment."

Aquilia glared at the big Negro and than back at the Mossad operative. Than it was his turn to sigh.

"I suppose you are right. But now we need to get away from here. This area will be swarming with Commies in a few hours or so."

"And we need to try and take some of the Narn with us," Norim, a Hauri and sort of the man for everything aboard, said and the rest of the group nodded, except for Ichiko, who was too busy hugging the Landmate.


	15. Chapter 13

Cold War

by Warringer

Chapter Twelve

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Franklin couldn't help but look into the cargo hold of the _Sanchez_. They had managed to get about a thousand Narn into the ship, most of them injured from the blasts of the three nukes, but thankfully they had managed to get a few Narn medics with them. There had been a few Narn commies out there, but thanks to the PPCs and the Landmate they had been able to chase them away.

A bit surprising was the fact that they also had a small clan of Wlatschides aboard, the male and the female alpha of the clan working for a NATO trading company the _Sanchez_ had done a few fright runs for.

He knew how the Wlatschides were, having lived next to an also small clan of them back in Earth. Franklins father had always compared them to Earthern wolves and Franklin guessed that it wasn't that far from the truth, even if they were intelligent and much more civilized. But it had been a huge surprise back than when the puppy he had played with suddenly started to talk to him.

The small clan of Wlatschides consisted of two males, three females and about ten kids, four of them younger than four years as they still walked mainly on all fours.

He shook his head for a moment and looked out of a window next to him. The surface was going past rather fast as the ship was on its way towards the Great Forrest that covered a good fourth of the main continent, which was as large as Eurasia and Africa combined. He had talked to some Narn. They had never been interested in the Great Forrest and so it wasn't cartographed or anything. They had only been interested in the mountains and the ores hey could mine there.

Sure there had been a few expeditions into the Great Forrest, but they were never heard of again. Some Narn talked about strange beasts that were seen in the area near the Forrest by some of the people who were interested, but not stupid enough to enter the Forrest. The only thing known was that there most of the trees in the Forrest were taller than even the Redwood trees back on Earth, easily two hundred fifty meters tall and with wide branches.

---------------------------------------------------------------

The Spectre would have frowned, if it still had a body capable of frowning. These Soviet mainframes had too little security for its taste. Well, considering that they were disconnected from the international computer network it was understandable. The Russians were pretty ignorant that there may be someone who didn't care about that. Especially an entity like the Spectre.

The Spectre had made it into the news a few years ago, but that was when it still had a biological body. And it still was present in the culture of the NATO, as the 'Laughing Man' had become a 'Stand Alone Complex' as some called it.

Back than it had been a young woman, Mackie Molinas, born and grown up with an unknown form of telepathy that allowed her to connect to computers. Her cybrain only strengthened it, Than she got Cybrain Sclerosis and an incident she never thought about created the 'Laughing Man'. Only a year later, she had died in a traffic incident, her body being consumed by the flames of burning fuel.

While Mackie Molinas had died, her Ghost, her soul had refused to die. It fled into the Net and became the entity that called itself the Spectre or Spex, when it appeared in a chatroom. The Spectre had discovered many secrets of the Net, like the Lost Ghosts, the Ghosts of people who had died during a connection with the Net. Other than the Spectre, they lost their individuality, becoming blank slates.

The Spectre had absorbed a few of these unfortunate Lost Ghosts, its special telepathic ability growing stronger and stronger and eventually it developed other abilities. For a short amount of time it could exist outside of the Net or even a computer, manifested as a body of its own choice . And it could access computers physically disconnected from the Net, such as the mainframe of the Soviet Admiralty.

The Spectre didn't really like the Soviets. There were much more Lost Ghosts in their portion of the Net and those Lost Ghosts were practically haunting the Net, while the Lost Ghosts in the NATO portion of the Net mostly stayed put only now and than changing data packages or disrupting people who dived into the Net.

But the Spectre didn't like to be drawn into the quarrels of the human life it had left behind to become an entity of the Net. But sometimes it wondered if it was the right thing to do.

As its electronic gaze went over the files in front of it, it gave an electronic shudder.

The files contained the detailed plans for a Soviet invasion of the Narn and some other races.

It liked its freedom and the freedom of the Net. It didn't like the Soviets. It didn't like the Shadows or the Vorlons. It didn't like what it had seen in the old files from the Acients computers.

It debated with itself for several microseconds, a long time for an entity like it.

There was only one thing it could do now.

---------------------------------------------------------------

McMichaels cursed. The _Francis Drake_ and the two freighters had just used the Jumpgate of Kotok and ran straight into a group of Soviet ships. Two Akulas and four Delfins that had intercepted several freighters already. The heavy jamming prevented the _Drake_ to get any useful passive data, but some of the active scanners of the freighters were able to get at least a slight look into the system and the single planet of the system.

His mind was racing. He couldn't do much. His ship may have been an old Hauri battle cruiser, but against six Soviet ships he couldn't do much.

Than he came to a solution. He knew that the Soviets, while having developed an active cloak, were not able to get through it and used special tachyon transmitters to get the positions of their ships. And since the _Drake_ didn't have one of these transmitters, but was equipped with a detector for it, he could snoop around in the system.

He knew that he and his pirates weren't very liked by either NATO and the Soviets, but it was possible to talk to the NATO. Maybe he could pull a 'Francis Drake'? Spy on the Soviets in this system and then relay the data to the NATO, stop his pirate attacks on NATO and Narn ships and concentrate on the Soviets. Maybe getting money from the NATO for preying on Soviet ships?

Another thing came to mind. If the Soviets had invaded this system, and everything pointed to wards it, there had to be freighters inbound to fortify the system.

McMichaels knew a bit about the Soviet fortifications of their systems. They would put special weapons turrets onto the struts of the Jumpgate, using them as shields to prevent their destruction. Additional to that were several weapons platforms twice about as large as their Putin dropships, packing enough weapons to fight against an Arleigh Burke destroyer on equal footing while being only a third of the size.

If the Soviets fortified the system it would become a hard nut to crack. And he rather wanted to deal with NATO than the Soviets.

He nodded to himself as he gave his next orders.


	16. Chapter 14

Cold War

by Warringer

Chapter Thirteen

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The Soviet Convoy en route to Kotok was relatively small. Six Megaton Korolev class freighters and three Delfins, NATO codename Hyperion. This was the pray for the _Francis_ _Drake_. Captain McMichaels had practically invented the piracy raids in jumpspace, so the raid directly while the convoy was on its way top Kotok was something normal to this merry band of pirates.

Soviet cloaking devices worked even in jumpspace and so the three Delfins didn't know what hit them when the _Drake_ decloaked right above the convoy and fired several Soviet R-39 anti-cap ship missiles at them, resulting in the three ships detonating in several Megatons of thermonuclear death.

The rest was a textbook raid, just with one difference. The _Drake_ didn't just take the freight as loot, since they didn't have any freight capability for several megatons of military hardware. Knowing that the Soviet freighters had a small crew, McMichaels opted to just take the ships and the loot. The small crews were put into bring on the _Drake_ and than the ships slaved into one of the freighters computer system and than send towards Sector One with a small crew of pirates.

Back on Blackbeard Base, the loot would be used to fortify the asteroid itself, while the freighters were taken apart. Maybe it was possible to use the parts of the freighters to build a whole new pirate ship from scratch? The engines were designed to push several megatons of freight, the reactors to power the engines and the framework of the ships to take the stress of the engines.

Maybe it was possible to make one overpowered pocket battle ship from six megaton freighters and some of the loot?

---------------------------------------------------------------

Von Bülow narrowed his eyes as he looked at the report in front of him. The tachyon receivers of Tau Ceti Station had picked up a transmission, directed to Von Bülow personally.

"McMichaels," he said with a sigh as he looked at it.

He knew McMichaels. That man had been at Westpoint and may have been able to make career in the fleet, but he had dropped out became a Raider, correction, a pirate. A very good one at that.

Von Bülows eyes scanned the transmission and than cursed. So the Soviets had really attacked Narn space. They even had the guts to tell the Narn there that they were coming to 'free their Narn comrades from the oppressive Narn Regime'.

Further down was a small encoded file that could only be decrypted with a standard NATO encryption. The file than was packed and consisted of sensory data from McMichaels ship and another text file.

Von Bülow's glance went over the data files for a moment, before he turned to the text file.

"That sneaky little..."

Von Bülow had to chuckle at the proposal of McMichaels. He would stop attacking NATO freighters and only attack Soviet ships. Just like back in the days of Francis Drake, when nations payed pirates to do their dirty work for them.

The Admiral thought for a few moments. Maybe it was the right idea at the right time. He'd have to send the data to the Pentagon through...

---------------------------------------------------------------

Franklin stared up at the canopy that was created by the branches of the giant trees of the Great Forrest. It was like straight out of a fantasy movie. The lowest branch of the trees was in a hundred meters hight and over fifty meters above the upper hull of the _Sanchez_.

Light fell through small opeing in the branches, lighting the mossy and grassy earth beneath. Here and there were shrubberies stranding near the giant tree trunks, which were standing several hundred meters apart from each other wide enough for the _Sanchez_ to fly through.

Hell, Aquilia had flown the _Sanchez_ more than ten miles underneath the canopy of the trees after diving beneath them in a large enough clearing. It was surreal.

So the _Sanchez_ was now standing beneath and between the giant trees with space to spare. The problem now were the Narn they had taken with them. The couldn't all live in the ships cargo hold and the Sanchez didn't have enough stuff to make the right quarters for about a thousand Narn.

Another problem was food. They would have to find some animals that could be eaten by the Narn. Water wasn't a problem as there was a rather large stream near the ship and the water was cleaner than any water Franklin had seen on Earth.

And than there was something else. Some of the Narn that had been scouting out the area around the landing place, were reporting that they felt as if someone was watching them. Others had reported strange stones sitting here and there between the trees. Some of the stones were processed in some way, some spotting inscriptions, pictures and glyphes.

"-HOLY SHIT!-" he suddenly heard a very loud voice over the wire less connection of his cybrain and flinched.

It was that loud that he had to clean his ears with his fingers.

"-What is it, Norim?-" Ichiko asked back, also over the wifi connection between them.

She was currently busy to try and find a way to make some sort of quarters.

"-Ehm,-" the Hauri ehmed back,"- I guess you should take a look at this.-"

With that he send an image over the wifi connection and everyone of the Sanchez' crew could see what the Hauri saw about there kilometers north in search of some sot of food source.

Franklin couldn't help it as his yaw followed pull of gravity and he gaped. Norim was standing or laying on a hill looking down at a depression in the ground between some of the giant trees.

In the center of the deporession was something that looked like a Maya pyramid with six sides, surrounded by solid stone buildings of a honest to goddess small city. And that city was alive.

Than Norim's point of view changed as his head jerked around.

"-Guys, I guess we are not alone,-" he commented as he looked down a rather primitive musket held by a being that looked very much like a small Wlatschide with pale brown fur, clothes in several shades of green fabric and backed up by four more riflemen.

"-I just hope they are friendly...-"


	17. Interlude 3

Cold War

by Warringer

Interlude Three

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"The RngNar are the native species to the planet Kotok in Narn space. They weren't discovered by either the Centauri nor the Narn for over 350 years since the first Centauri had stepped onto the largely earthlike planet. They were finally discovered in 2011, during the Soviet invasion of the Kotok system.

The RngNar are a race of lupine bipeds, genetically descendant to the Wlatschides of the Ancient Alliance, living in the Great Forrest of Kotok, a forest of mega-trees the size of the old United States of America.

Compared to the Wlatschides, they are smaller, about one meter fifty tall with a light brown colored fur. But there are two sub-races of the RngNar.

The RngNarSat are living on the ground surrounding the mega trees of the Great Forest. They tend to be more stocky and muscular than the RngNarTac, who are living in the lower branches of the mega trees. The RngNarTac are build for the living in the trees and aren't able to retract their claws other than the RngNarSat.

The RngNarSat are herders, mainly living of herds of domesticated cattle and some domesticated plants. They are mostly living in smaller towns based around six edged stone pyramids.

The RngNarSat architecture can be compared to old Earth Maya architecture based on six walled structures mainly build from burned bricks and wooden beams.

The RngNarTac are living of the mega trees themselves, using the foliage, fruits and animals that are sharing their living area.

The RngNarTac don't have an architecture per se, as they are building their home directly into the tree themselves.

Both RngNar sub-races are sharing their religion, believing in the Spirits of Nature and their Ancestors.

Technologically they are generally as advanced as mankind was in the 17th century with several anomalies in their technology. They are using several forms of plastic produced from the sap of the mega trees and even a form of reinforced carbon fiber materials.

Military wise they have developed a form of muskets that are superior to old earth muskets, using rather modern projectile forms and rifled barrels. Likewise they are using rifled barrels and modern projectile forms for their artillery.

The RngNarTac even managed to tame a large forest bird they are using to deliver primitive bombs.

In late 2011 they were essential to the liberation of Kotok and after the End of the Narn Conflict the RngNar and the Great Forest became NATO protectoreate. In the NATO the RngNar are commonly called 'Ranger' and several of them have left their homeworld to enter NATO service.

It is generally believed that the RngNar are descendants of Wlatschides that crashed on Kotok during the Great War."

- Encyclopedia Britannica, 2013


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